FAMILY PB - Softcover

Puzo, Mario

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062089153 ISBN 13: 9780062089151

Publisher: Avon, 2018

Synopsis

"Dazzling, passionate, a masterwork that ranks with Puzo's best."
--Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguys

"One of his most satisfying works....A thoroughly entertaining posthumous present from one of the masters of popular fiction."
--Booklist

Mario Puzo's final masterwork. A sweeping epic saga of corruption, greed, treachery, and sin, The Family is the ultimate crowning achievement of the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist who gave the world The Godfather, arguably the greatest Mafia crime novel ever written. In The Family, Puzo--whom the Washington Post calls, "A serious American talent"--plunges reader into the colorful tumult of the Italian Renaissance, immersing them in the roiling intrigues and deadly affairs of the remarkable family whose name has always been synonymous with power, corruption, poison, and murder: the infamous Borgias.

About this title

Review:

The Family is the belated fruit of Mario Puzo's life-long obsession with the Borgias, whom the creator of Don Corleone saw as just another family whose family business happened to involve killing people. He never got round to writing the book until his last months, when he was old and tired and made some unfortunate artistic decisions. This is the sort of old-fashioned historical novel in which the likes of Machiavelli, Da Vinci and Savonarola make momentary walks-on and in which people regularly spend half a page explaining international politics to each other--nonetheless, much of it has an intensity that compels in spite of the stiltedness of much of the dialogue. Puzo and his editor feel that the interesting story is how Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander, created his son Cesare as the dark instrument of his will, and how Lucrezia, the emotional heart of the family, became a woman many remember as saintly in spite of participating fully, even incestuously, in her family's intrigues. The Borgias were not so different from their various rivals--just, for a while, more successful. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Head-long entertainment, bubbling over with corruption, betrayal, assassinations, Richter-scale romance, and, of course, family values" (Time)

"Puzo is a master storyteller with an uncanny facility for details that force the reader to keep the pages turning. Call it a literary meat-hook" (USA Today)

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0062089153
• ISBN 13: 9780062089151
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 434